No time to read!

This week brought a big work deadline and company -- not much time left for reading. I did finish Daughter of Smoke and Bone and would give it three or four stars. Looks like there will be more to come. I'm supposed to Blink read  for one book group and "Unwind" for another. I'm not sure about "Blink"; it does look intriguing. But I'm feeling more drawn to "Unwind" at the moment.

Any votes on which to read first?

Yikes! Talk about needing violence ratings

I started reading "The Sisters Brothers" by Patrick deWitt, because I downloaded a sample for my Kindle and I really liked the author's writing style. But by the time I got to chapter 3, or thereabouts, the body count has escalated beyond my tolerance level. I recognize that it's probably supposed to be over the top so as to make a point, but still. It reminds me of a western version of Pulp Fiction, a movie I couldn't watch.

I'm sad that I had to stop reading, because I was really enjoying one of the characters. It's rather hard, though, to cover your eyes while reading, so for now -- down it goes. I may get the courage to revisit it later, but for the moment I've moved on to Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor. Fingers crossed.

Does it make you sad?

Two times recently, a friend has decided not to read or not to finish a book I really like -- “Nation” by Terry Pratchett. Does it make you sad when friends reject or don’t care for a book that you really like? Usually it doesn’t bother me. I recognize that everyone has different tastes, and I certainly don’t enjoy every book that my friends and family like. But on occasion, I feel a little sting when someone won’t even give a book a chance. I don’t hold it against them; I just wish they could have the same experience with the book that I had when I read it.

How do you feel when someone dislikes or won’t read a book that you love?

And the Little Free Library grows

As my son and his girlfriend headed to the gym in the Piedmont area of Oakland, they discovered a Little Free Library, just like the ones they read about on my blog recently. So they snapped a quick photo for me. I guess the goodness of free books is spreading. Hallelujah!

Do we need violence ratings for books?

I just finished Mockingjay, the last book in the Hunger Games series. While I really enjoyed the whole series, I've got to say the violence in the final book got to be a bit much for me. Lately, my tolerance level for violence in books, movies and TV shows has become really low. I quit watching Hawaii Five-0 several episodes ago after refusing to sit through a lengthy torture scene. Same thing with NCIS: Los Angeles. I just don't have the stomach for it anymore -- if I ever did.

But what about books? For me, books are actually more affecting than movies or TV. For some reason, scenes from a book or story can really stick with me. One particularly disturbing scene I read in an Ellery Queen magazine over 40 years ago can still haunt me. I wish I had never read it, and that's the problem. Once you've read something it's there in your mind, like it or not.

My book discussion group buddies are well aware of my squeamishness about graphic violence. But it's not always easy to determine just which books I'll be unable to face. Last year, one of our choices was Little Bee by Chris Cleave. Initially, I loved Little Bee's voice and the story looked promising. But when we got to the beach scene in Africa, I just couldn't go there. I knew it was going to be really bad -- and my friends confirmed that it was. So I skipped the rest of the book. Another book that I found really disturbing, but that the whole world seemed to love, was The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. I only got part way into the book and realized I couldn't read it. My friend convinced me to skip a little ahead and try again. Unfortunately, that took me to the scene in the stadium -- those of you who have read it will probably recall the scene. Nope, not gonna finish that one.

When friends heard I was reading The Hunger Games, they were surprised. They thought it might be too violent for me. But I actually enjoyed the first two books. In the last book, the body count went up too much, not to mention the cruelty factor. Another book that should have disturbed me greatly but didn't was The Bone People by Keri Hulme, the 1985 Booker Prize winner. The story deals with child abuse, but the book is about so much more than that. I'm not sure, though, why I was able to read this book and not others. I think that the cruelty factor plays a big part.

What about you? Do you have a violence tolerance level? Would you like to have violence ratings on books, like we have for movies?

Are you a rereader?

We had a discussion recently on my favorite website, Readers Paradise, about rereading books. I'm not one to reread books very often. I will reread a book for my book club if I've read it too many months before the discussion is set to take place. Sometimes this dampens my enthusiasm for the book. Other times, I get more out of the second reading than I did from the first. I just reread The Hunger Games for this month's discussion. I enjoyed it just as much as the first time. But when I reread Where the Heart Is by Billie Letts, I was disappointed and wished I hadn't revisited that story. One book I have read several times, by choice, is Sarah Canary.

Some people, it seems, find great comfort in rereading books. It's almost like comfort food for them. In fact, some even have their favorites that they revisit every year. One woman mentioned that she had reread the Lord of the Rings series 19 times!

What about you - do you reread books? Do you have favorites that you revisit on a regular basis? How do you decide which books are worthy of a reread?

Free books

So, what to do with all those books you read and enjoyed but don't have room to keep? You could donate them to your local library or the Goodwill. You could haul a box down to your sister's house and leave them on her doorstep. You could even take them to your next book club meeting and share them with your fellow bookies. Or, you could install a Little Free Library in your front yard and share them with community -- not only a great way to pay it forward, but also a good way to meet your neighbors.

Book Lovers Heaven

If you’re like me, your family tries to steer you away from bookstores whenever possible. They know once you cross the threshold, you’ll be lost to them for at least an hour. I thought about that yesterday, when my sister mentioned a village in Wales that is literally filled with bookstores. So I researched it and learned that, indeed, the village of Hay-on-Wye, located on the Welsh side of the Welsh/English Border in the County of POWYS, Wales, has at least 30 bookstores. (Heaven!!) New books, old books, rare books, bear books. You name it; they’ve got it. This village is definitely going on my bucket list. 

                                                                  Hay-on-Wye

The courage of authors

Those of us who read (and review) books sometimes lose sight of the fact that a real person has spent time and emotion to put that story into words. And those of us who edit books can sometimes be even more oblivious, even insensitive, to the reality of an author’s efforts.

I thought about that this week when a fellow member of the EFA (Editorial Freelancers Association) posted a link to a letter John Steinbeck wrote upon completing “East of Eden,” one of my favorite novels. 

A book is like a man—clever and dull, brave and cowardly, beautiful and ugly. For every flowering thought there will be a page like a wet and mangy mongrel, and for every looping flight a tap on the wing and a reminder that wax cannot hold the feathers firm too near the sun.

Well—then the book is done. It has no virtue any more. The writer wants to cry out—"Bring it back! Let me rewrite it or better—Let me burn it. Don't let it out in the unfriendly cold in that condition."

Steinbeck letter

Thank goodness for brave souls such as Steinbeck, who, after laboring for months or years to tell a story, have the courage to put that story into the hands of an editor and eventually out to the public.